Felix Loch was born to luge. His story goes a long way toward explaining why Germany, which trailed the USA by two medals through Wednesday afternoon, is a winter sports juggernaut, winner of the total medal count in four of the last five Winter Games.

U.S. bobsled pilot Mike Kohn relied on an old Olympic expression and a cartoon to get here. The USA's No. 4 bobsled driver at the start of the 2009-10 season, Kohn didn't make the World Cup circuit. He bounced around bobsled's minor league, racing in the America's Cup.

The topic of speed and the subsequent safety concerns won't go away at the Whistler Sliding Centre. This time, USA-1 women's bobsled pilot Shauna Rohbock brought more attention to the super-fast, technically challenging track when she called the 90 mph bobsled runs "stupid fast" and said "this is the end of the road for where we need to be" in terms of speed.

The USA will match the number of medals it won in the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, USA TODAY predicts. The U.S. team is projected to win 25 medals, nine of them gold, finishing behind Canada (34) and Germany (32).

Named "The Night Train," the sled that has carried Team Holcomb to a historic world title and high hopes for the 2010 Olympics already is well known on the bobsled circuit. Competitors eyeball it at the finish line and take pictures, looking for secrets to the speed beneath its unusual, flat-black finish.

U.S. Olympic hopefuls Mike Kohn and Bree Schaaf likely drove their bobsleds into the Vancouver Games on Saturday. Kohn was 12th in a two-man World Cup race at St. Moritz, Switzerland. Schaaf was 11th on the same track. Those finishes are expected to be good enough to earn the U.S. three spots in both disciplines Sunday when the final Olympic qualifying standings are announced by the International Federation of Bobsled and Tobogganing.